A BIOGRAPHY OF A MOUNTAIN

The contradictions of U.S. history through the lens of Mount Rushmore.

President Trump’s July 2020 visit to Mount Rushmore and his speech arguing for a “singular vision” of American history sparked author and journalist Davis’ interest in the monument and its past. Davis concluded that “the mile-high shelf of Harney Peak granite…which now stands as our most visible piece of Americana, deserves to have its story told in full.” And yet the book is less a comprehensive “biography of a mountain” and more an interrogation of the contested and varied meanings of the Black Hills, Mount Rushmore, and American history to different people over time. Davis begins with an account of the Black Hills and the Lakota people who inhabited the area at least as early as the 18th century. The federal government’s 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie promised the Lakota ownership of the land that included the Black Hills, but it was unscrupulously undone by the 1876 Manypenny Agreement. As Davis searches for the meaning of Mount Rushmore, he reveals that its creation was the result of happenstance, not an intentional federal or state effort to create an American memorial. In 1923, South Dakota state historian Doane Robinson had suggested that a sculpture of Lakota leader Red Cloud on one of the Black Hills’ granite “needles” might increase tourist traffic and help the state’s economy. When Robinson reached out to sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who had designed a memorial to Confederate leaders on a mountain face in Georgia, Borglum saw an opportunity to create a bigger, national version of Stone Mountain, and Robinson’s original plan was abandoned. Thus, this contested site owes its existence to the specific vision of Borglum, a first-generation American whose father was a Mormon convert from Denmark in a polygamous marriage to two sisters. The myriad executive orders of a second Trump administration have made portions of Davis’ work feel slightly dated, although the book was “reported on and researched” from May 2022 to May 2024. This is no fault of Davis’; indeed, it speaks to the fact that the very issues of history and meaning that Davis grapples with are so timely that they have been shifting daily, sometimes hourly, under the present administration.

A meaningful read that wrestles with the complexity of American history and its presentation.